Modo - Triangulation causes various visible triangles

erebel55

So I'm triangulating my mesh in modo and exporting to fbx, but I get various visible triangles in places when I do this and have to go around finding all the spots it happened and adjust vertices to fix it.

Does anyone know a way to avoid this issue?

I have attached a handful of screenshots showing some of the visible triangles. This happens in quite a few spots and is a little time consuming. So I'm hoping there is a way to avoid these issues.










Thank you :poly122:

Farfarer

I'm not certain what would be causing it. Although I'd always recommend that you triangulate the mesh before exporting to FBX, just as standard practice - seems like you're doing that.

Do you have any vertices very close together? Could be you're getting a bunch of really thin triangles coming out. Try welding the verts of the mesh with a very small distance threshold.

A shot from MODO with wireframes on of the same areas might help. If not upload the LXO file and I can have a look at it.

erebel55

Yeah that's what I'm doing. I'm triangulating and then exporting to FBX. I modeled most of the mesh before looking at it triangulated though, which I now know was a bad idea because I am getting these triangles scattered all over the map.

But yes, the issue seems to be at the vertex level and I am able to get rid of the triangles once I hunt them down. It's a bit tedious to hunt them all down and then fix the verts.

I'm surprised that mesh cleanup doesn't clean these up.

Could this have anything to do with the smoothing groups?

Edit: I will work on getting the wireframe shots.

Farfarer

Yeah, mesh cleanup should sort out most stuff like this.

How are you getting rid of the triangles when you hunt them down?

erebel55

I've updated my original post with the corresponding wireframe shot from MODO.

I have been triangulated and then doing mesh cleanup, so it's odd that it's missing all of these.

I need to check with the other artist working on this as he has been doing them. But from what I gathered he is fixing it at the vertex level, by fixing their alignment. I will get a more complete answer asap.

erebel55

Okay, I checked with the other artist and there are different scenarios going on that cause the triangles.

- Deleting edges and re-extending them so they connect and complete the rings.
- Making sure all vertices are aligned properly and there aren't any strays.
- Make sure there are no vertices welded to edges - all vertices should be welded to vertices.

Should mesh cleanup be doing this for us?

Farfarer

Within reason. The mesh might be valid by it's rules, but still messy.

Might just need to take more care with modeling. Did you try welding all the verts of the mesh using a small (but non-zero) value?

repete

If you post a "segment" of the problem areas I will take a look at it.

In the past smoothing has caused this issue but I can't help you without looking at the mesh.

Swizzle

Go to your Lists tab and click on the Other Maps dropdown. If there's a vertex map there, right click and either delete it or press Clear and see what happens.

Your vertex normals are probably getting screwed up when you triangulate, so clearing or deleting vertex normal maps is a good way to fix that issue.

erebel55

@Farfarer yeah I do that vert welding technique often.

@Swizzle I've never really spent much time in that tab so thank you for pointing it out. However, there wasn't any maps under the Other Maps dropdown (before or after triangulation).

Farfarer

Yeah, it's really hard to tell what's up without the lxo file to look at. Can you upload it somewhere or at least a problematic section of it?